Ready Player One poster ridiculed for bad Photoshop, turns out to be accurate

If you are a sci-fi geek like me there is a good chance you’ve read Ready Player One. I read it a while back, and while I really loved the general idea, I think that the plot was lacking. This is why I was very excited to hear they are making a movie. Maybe they’ll correct what needs to be corrected.

But, this is not a Sci-Fi blog, it’s a photo blog, so today we explore the “was that a photoshop error” that is the Ready Player One poster.

The movie poster was released about 6 days ago, one day ahead of the trailer. And faster than you can end a game of Pacman, fans started to mock the poster for poor compositing. Specifically, for giving Tye (the hero) a borderline-freakish long right leg. Judge for yourself:

Not seeing it? here it is again:

Now, the internets were all over this, but is this a case of bad photoshopping? Some analysis shows that this may just be a camera perspective trick.

A lengthy (yet interesting) thread from Captain Disillusion breaks down Tye’s body by perspective and body proportions, to show that the knee (and overall leg length) are just right. (click here for the full breakdown)

Well, what do you know? The half-way point, as dictated by the rules of perspective, lands squarely on his crotch! The part of the body below the crotch, a.k.a. the leg, appears to take the amount of space in the bounding box it's typically supposed to. pic.twitter.com/zNooHFgEXD

And another artist actually went through the length of putting a skeleton demo on the photo to show that it’s anatomically correct. (this was sent here, so if you know who to credit, please let me know)

Sometimes, it’s not on the compositing artist, it’s simply on a poor angle selection.

If his leg were longer than the other he would be walking in circles the whole movie 😉

Thomas Hart Sinclair

That might make it a Modern Dance movie, not a bad idea! Or, if it was a horror movie and a woman… “No Escape from Matt Lauer!” 🙂

Simon Narquist

It’s not “poor angle selection” it is the armchair artists who never had a proper founding in anatomy for artists…

Luca De Nardi

What about that poor rim light on the hero’s face? It looks more awkward to me than his leg 🙂

Cody

Err…is there a reason that the right leg in that skeleton appears to be completely detached from the rest of the skeleton?

Jayson Carey

you can’t see the end of the femur where it plugs into the hip.

Wade3

Hero’s name is not Tye, where the heck did you get that from? His name is Wade Watts and his avatar’s name is Parzival but that’s just someone who read the book or did a quick Google search. Also could throw in there that none of the other side characters have the name Tye. Well done on doing research before publishing.

J.A. Miller

Tye is the actor’s name.

Wade Watts

The actor playing him in the movie is named Tye. You know the movie the poster is for. The guy on the poster. Try doing some research before commenting

Dontay Williams

This is like all the internet tears shed over cgi 😂 Clueless trolls think they’re experts on things they themselves can’t do

Clinton Lofthouse is a Photographer, Retoucher and Digital Artist based in the United Kingdom, who specialises in creative retouching and composites. Proud 80's baby, reader of graphic novels and movie geek!
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